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Of course, when Ngram searches Google Books, it tells us only how many citations there are in published works, not whether those citations are supportive or dismissive. So why did I use this unscientific, anecdotal Ngram? Because it supports my thesis. :-)
Anyway, I agree that âpaperless officeâ is meaningless marketing hype. Sellen and Harper's book on the topic brings up some of the same issues that were raised in this thread. The point of the article was to bring up some additional impediments to reducing paper use.
Happy Friday,
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Stuart Burnfield
Sent: Friday, February 05, 2016 12:14 AM
To: Techwr-l
Subject: RE: Need Feedback from Technical Editors
Thanks for the link to your article, Dan.
The Ngram graph of references to the term âpaperless officeâ is interesting, but doesn't tell us how many hits were earnest predictions or votes in favour of the idea and how many were sniffy barbs about how that silly old prediction never came true.
Who ever claimed that the office of the future would be paperless or near paperless? It must have happened but honestly, I can hardly remember any such claims. Perhaps there was one of those 'world of the future' documentaries or some IT industry marketing puff that said this was on the way, but it was probably before our time.
If those old predictions actually meant that ICT would lead to the 'less paper' office, not the paperless office, then I'd say that's just a true and uncontroversial statement.
--- Stuart
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